News

This page features excerpts from news about environmental justice advocacy in the San Joaquin Valley and links to their original sources. Use the features on the right to sort by topic, news source, date, key word or author. You may also subscribe to receive the news by e-mail or through an rss reader. Please note that links to original sources may expire over time.

Jovita Torres Romo lives in a grayish bungalow surrounded by cactus and succulents and strung with Christmas lights. It’s located on one of the handful of streets that make up Tombstone Territory, an unincorporated Fresno County community that’s been her home for 30 years. It’s quiet, except for the few days a week when her young grandchildren come over to watch cartoons and play in the backyard. “I like it here,” she says through a Spanish interpreter. “I raised five children here, they grew up in this house, and I like living outside the city in the county”…

Article, Radio by Cassandra Profita. Published July 6, 2019 in National Public Radio.

Oregon is on track to become the second U.S. state to pass an economywide cap-and-trade system to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. But while emulating the first such program (in California), Oregon also hopes to avoid repeating its mistakes. Oregon’s plan, like California’s, would set a cap on greenhouse gas emissions that would come down over time. It would also create a market for companies to buy and trade a limited number of pollution permits. Ultimately, it aims to reduce emissions to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050….

Article by Sarah Kennedy. Published June 27, 2019 in Yale Climate Connections.

Arvin, California is in Kern County, one of the top oil-producing areas in the U.S. Five years ago, a gas pipeline leak in Arvin forced dozens of residents from their homes for months. Flores: “Right there and then, community members said this is a bigger problem, and we need to solve it….

Uncategorized by Adeyinka Glover. Published June 26, 2019 in The Bakersfield Californian.

The city of Bakersfield has more money than ever before to handle local affairs. The increase in funds can be attributed in large part to the November 2018 passage of Measure N, a local general sales tax measure that projected a growth upwards of $50 million annually. Now that first year accruals are more accurately calculated, the city has a fiscal year 2019-2020 operating budget of $514,882,666 — an increase of $75,074,691 from last year…

Article, Radio by Capital Public Radio. Published June 26, 2019 in Ben Adler.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom asked for so much in his first state budget that he spent nearly two hours discussing it with reporters in January. Nearly six months later, he’s about to get much of what he wanted….

Article by Dan Bacher. Published June 25, 2019 in Red, Green, and Blue.

The California Environmental Justice Alliance (CEJA) today gave the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources (DOGGR), the state organization charged with regulating the oil and gas industry, an “F” grade for continuing to neglect the needs of environmental justice and low-income communities in the organization’s third annual Environmental Justice Agency Assessment for 2018…

Article by Odessa Lefrancois. Published June 25, 2019 in The Mercury News.

As a respiratory therapist, I am deeply concerned that California has the worst air quality in the nation. That’s bad news for everyone – but especially bad for hundreds of thousands of Bay Area residents the American Lung Association says are particularly vulnerable to the pollutants we’re spewing into our air…

Combat climate change, or clean up California’s water? Those alarmed by the Legislature’s decision to dip into a greenhouse gas fund to pay for clean drinking water may need to get used to it: constitutional restrictions on spending that money are set to expire in 2021….